When icing is a vice, it’s best to have someone else pour soapy water into the icing cups before you eat it all.
As a neo-pagan, I still enjoy celebrating Christmas, not for the Christianity in it, nor the Mithrianism the holiday is based on, but because it’s a great family tradition and a heck of an excuse for a party. So, if you’re a Christian and today is a holy day for you, Merry Christmas. For the Jews among my readers, Happy Hanukkah (which, according to my Jewish friends, starts at sundown tonight). For you various flavors of pagans and/or astronomers, Happy Solstice (albeit a few days late). And for everyone else, Happy Festivus.
It’s usually not a good sign when your friendly domestic cat acts feral at the vet.
I can appreciate that a principal needs to have the authority to decide what constitutes “appropriate” dress at a high school formal dance. But dammit, a kilt is absolutely appropriate attire to wear to a high school formal, regardless of what the principal thought according to this CNN article. To summarize, a Missouri high school student had the audacity to be interested in his genealogy and Scottish heritage and then to try and wear a reasonably formal kilt outfit to his high school dance, only to be told to go put on pants by the principal.
Nathan Warmack, the student in question, is absolutely right, wearing a kilt to a high school dance was absolutely going to turn heads. He’s pretty damn gutsy for doing it – I would never have considered doing something like that in high school. But several Scottish heritage groups, such as the Clan Gunn Society of North America (presumably Mr. Warmack’s clan, although the article never says), have come out in support of the student, and are even working to provide him with a more complete and accurate formal outfit.
This strikes rather close to home for me. I own a kilt (Irish rather than Scottish, but it’s still a kilt), and not only do I wear it to company holiday parties (and yes, it turns some heads and gets me some interesting questions, although usually not of the “is it true what you don’t wear beneath that kilt?” variety), I was married in my kilt and I married a couple of my friends to each other in my kilt too. A formal kilt outfit, complete with boots, hose, belt, sporran, dirk, Prince Charlie coat, tuxedo shirt, and tie is just as formal as any tuxedo. And, in my not-so-humble and thoroughly unbiased opinion, a formal kilt outfit blows away even the nicest tuxedo.
The principal of Mr. Warmack’s school should apologize and change his dress code for his formal dances. There are few occasions when they aren’t appropriate, and any student who has the guts to wear one should be permitted to do so.
out of the publicity.
There are times I hate politics. Recent developments in Congress have drawn this feeling out of me again. I’m talking specifically about the debacle that this year’s Defense appropriations bill is becoming. Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has made opening the ANWR to drilling the reason for his existence, and to that end, he used a bullshit procedural maneuver in conference committee to get ANWR drilling added to the defense bill. In addition, funding for Katrina relief and flu pandemic preparation are tacked onto the must-pass-by-the-end-of-the-year defense bill.
I’m a Ball Aerospace employee, and as such I work indirectly for the government. Ball gets contracts from both NASA and the Pentagon (and a few truly commercial contracts too, like the Quickbird imaging satellite for DigitalGlobe), and as such, my job may be adversely affected if the defense appropriation bill is delayed a whole lot further. But even so, I think that the Democrats and moderate Republicans who are opposing the bill and are threatening a filibuster are doing the right thing. ANWR and Katrina relief (and probably the flu pandemic funding too) should not be in a defense authorization bill.
Senator Stevens disagrees with me, of course, but that’s hardly a surprise. He claims that drilling in ANWR is a national security issue, that the drilling provision should be in a SPENDING bill because the Pentagon is the single largest user of petroleum in the country. That’s a logical argument, except for the fact that I could use logic to put nearly anything into the defense bill that way. How about a provision that requires the U.S. to sign onto the Kyoto accords that Bush II pulled us out of in 2001? Well, since the Pentagon itself has indicated that global warming, and its associated changes to populations, mass migrations, droughts, loss of fresh water, etc. are a huge national security concern, that makes global warming and the Kyoto Protocol (or something similar) a “defense” issue that could be added to the defense appropriations bill. Laptops for every school-aged child in the country? Well, since the digital divide means that we have unequal opportunities for children, we’re breeding an information underclass that will rise up against us as terrorists within our midst. You get my point, I’m sure.
What makes this even worse is that Sen. Stevens put the Katrina relief into the defense bill in order to entice senators from disaster prone areas into voting for the bill when they might otherwise be inclined to vote against it. Talk about cynical manipulation. Oh, I’m sorry, make that “politics as ususal.”
This bullshit needs to end. We need Congresscritters of every party to stop using procedural maneuvers and House-Senate conference committees to jam their pet project down our collective throats. If something doesn’t have a direct and immediate bearing on the bill in question, it shouldn’t be allowed into the bill at all. A simple rules change would be enough to do this, so long as the rule was made difficult to change after enacted. Of course, you’d probably get less discouraged and frustrated going mano-a-mano with the ocean than trying to get power-obsessed politicians to change their ways.
[Crossposted to The 5th Estate]
You know you’re an engineer when you look with jealousy at an available office and drool over the large white board.
Former Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire died today at the age of 90. This hits me on two levels, one political and the other personal. Let’s talk the political first.
In his 30+ years in the Senate, Senator Proxmire was an unrepentant foe of pork barrel spending. He invented the “Golden Fleece Award,” an award he gave monthly to bills and earmarks that he felt “fleeced” the taxpayers into paying huge amounts of money for something that was essentially worthless. Taxpayers for Common Sense has since tried to restart the Golden Fleece Awards, but hasn’t really been doing much with it, unfortunately. Now, some of Senator Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Awards have arguably turned out pretty good, but most of them were for things like current Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and Alaska Representative Don Young’s Gravina Bridge (aka Bridge to Nowhere). Pork barrel spending, especially earmarks for stupid things like the above-mentioned bridge, are a waste of taxpayer money, and specific earmarks should be removed across the board. Unfortunately, it’s more likely that we’ll see the wholesale elimination of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the sealing of the Mexican and Canadian border with concrete, concertina wire, and mine fields than we’ll eliminate earmarks.
On a personal level, I was saddened to hear that Senator Proxmire died due to Alzheimer’s Disease. My paternal grandfather had Alzheimer’s and ultimately died of it. There were times when he’d forget where he was and what he was doing. My dad and I took him to Yellowstone National Park when he was in the earlier stages, and while we were there, my grandfather forgot where he was and concluded that we were there for medical tests. That was one of the strangest, saddest experiences in my life. I remember when my grandfather helped build my HO scale train table with my dad when I was a kid. Over the years, Grandpa built me HO scale houses, stores, a train roundhouse, etc, and it was beautifully made. Hell, I remember the vague smell of Old Spice he had on him. But those good memories are tarnished by a disease that took my Grandpa from me. Physically, Grandpa was in great shape, but he gradually lost his mind. In the later stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, the individual afflicted doesn’t have enough presence of mind to realize that they’re effectively a memoryless child, but it still devastated me, and I wasn’t even all that close to my grandpa. And hearing that someone who had a pretty powerful impact on the course of the Senate over 30+ years died of a disease that steals your past from you, well, it reminded me of my grandpa. There’s a reason I donated my old car to the Alzheimer’s Association of Colorado - there are times when I wish that I’d had the support of an organization like the Alzheimer’s Association.
Please, if your lives are ever touched by someone with Alzheimer’s, consider asking for help. This is a disease that desperately needs effective treatment and a cure, but beyond that, watching someone you care about slowly slip into dementia is one of the most painful things you may ever have to endure.
[Crossposted to The 5th Estate]
Mr. Brain here. When I read about Nativity reinactments, I get quite amused. Mostly because there’s not a reenactment yet that’s truly accurate. Sure, it’s a fundamental tenent of Christianity that Christ was born to a virgin, Mary, and I don’t deny the miracle that would represent. But last I checked, there is nothing in Bible that says Mary didn’t go through labor. And as someone who’s been there when a woman was giving birth, I can honestly say it’s NOTHING like any nativity scene or reenactment I’VE ever seen.
I mean, really, where’s the moaning and groaning in discomfort? Where’s the water breaking and making a mess on the manger floor? Where’s Mary squatting over straw and pushing like she desperately needs four ExLax tablets? Where’s the blood? For that matter, where do we see Mary cursing God for doing this to her or trying to grab Joseph’s lower lip and screaming “GIVE ME MORPHINE!” at the sky?
And what about baby Jesus himself? Every reenactment I’ve ever come across either uses a fake baby or a young-en who is at least several weeks past birth. Not a single baby is ever beet red and slimy like he should be. I’ve never seen a baby Jesus wail at the top of his lungs for the better part of 15 minutes after being hung unceremoniously upside down by his legs to let the amniotic fluid drain from his lungs before getting spanked to start his breathing. And lest we forget, I’ve got two more words for you: Blessed meconium....
If you’re going to reenact the Nativity, knock yourselves out. But please, be honest to the viewers. Having Jesus suddenly pop up out from under an energetic Mary’s robes happy and clean just isn’t right.
Insanely busy days at work and painting at night when you get home from said work leaves for precious little time for blogging.